[Editor’s note: This was our 2008 April Fool’s Post]
We’ve just learned that in the next “dot” release of InDesign (version 5.0.3.1.r42), Adobe is removing all support for printing. The File > Print command will be replaced with File > Export to AIR and the various print-based PDF Presets will be removed, in favor of three new presets, including one for PDF/X-6 (which, as we’ve previously reported, supports only transparent objects on layers, converting opaque objects and images with transparency effects when necessary).
“You have to look forward,” noted Shantanu Narayen, C.E.O. of Adobe. “Sure, print had a good run of it. But we believe designers have lost interest in that medium. Why would anyone want to print, now that Flash has been released for the iPhone?”
We reached Michael Ninness, senior product manager for InDesign, who affirmed the news. “XHTML. Flash. PDF. XML. This is the future. Ink is messy. InDesign is clean. In a clean world, there is only clean output. It’s an inconvenient truth, but we’re going green by eliminating paper output workflows. Pure AIR.”
Other features in the free, but mandatory upgrade include:
- Feature degradation (individual features and tools will begin to break down over time, eventually failing around the time the next fee-based upgrade is released).
- RealType integration (where typos are introduced by the software randomly, in order to make your final product more realistic and “human”)
- Panels (which were “palettes” in CS2) will now be renamed “poodles”
We expect the release to come sometime in the next week, and Adobe Updater will download and install the 1.8 Gb update automatically.
Of course, if this causes any concern, be sure to check your date and comment below.
This article was last modified on December 18, 2021
This article was first published on April 1, 2008
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